Max followed the sound of Ester’s voice, stopped short outside the drawing room, and found a heavy velvet curtain to hide behind. She was perfectly hidden from the inside, but outside, she would be in plain view: the Bosphorus Strait ran below her, deep and still. She watched the water. It calmed her, a little.

Klaus’s footsteps exited the room as planned. Max leaned out from the curtain, smiled as calmly as she could manage in her dizzy state, and gave him the stopper from Ester’s perfume bottle. It seemed a lifetime ago that she had peered into it on the Bosfor, looking for the diamond. It had been a good theory: it was exactly the right size.

Klaus winked, and put the stopper in his pocket, taking care that it bulged against the fabric. He went into the third room on the left, just to keep up appearances; then disappeared back into the drawing room.

Max’s heart hammered. Surely, surely, her ever-sharp-eyed great-aunt would take the bait?

She didn’t have long to wait. The rustle of Great-Aunt Elodie’s skirts came next – accompanied, very faintly, by some cheeping from her clenched left hand. Max gave her enough time to turn the corner, then followed the sound of her light footsteps. Left, right, up, down, left, left, down – Max prayed that she would not need to find her way back out of the house again, because the warren got more and more confusing. At last, the footsteps paused.

Max risked a peek around the corner. More flowers, more tapestries, more cages – in one, a majestic parrot dressed in jewels of every shade remarked, “Meddlers! Meddlers!” to no one in particular. Great-Aunt Elodie was taking a painting from a wall, to check the contents of the safe behind.

Yes. So that’s where it was kept. Max withdrew, and danced a two-second wriggly victory dance. Then she tucked herself behind another curtain. The other side of the house this time, looking out to the street below – out over Europe. Perhaps, she thought, if you could flatten all the houses and mountains in the way, it was looking to France. Home.

Great-Aunt Elodie withdrew. Max counted to one hundred, to let her get back to the drawing room. She counted to fifty, for luck. Then she found a window at the side of the house, overlooking the gardens, and waved a thumbs up to the rosemary below.

Even though she was expecting them, the alarms made her jump. They wailed like howling wolves. In the hallway, red lights pulsed, onoffonoffonoff. Max put her hands over her ears.

In a nearby cage, an emerald bird blinked and blinked and blinked in distress, its little beak open in a scream that had no hope of being heard.

14. Behind the Painting